Halloween 2022: October 17th

The Munsters (2022)

When rumors began to circulate that Rob Zombie was directing a movie version of “The Munsters,” I wasn't sure how to react. The director has maintained an easily recognizable aesthetic over his film career. He does unrelentingly vulgar horror movies with an in-your-face, white trash intensity. “The Munsters,” meanwhile, was a hokey sitcom about wacky family shenanigans. I don't need to hear Herman Munster say “fuck.” After months of speculating if Rob  would stick to the tone of the show or adapt “The Munsters” to his style, it was revealed that the project would be rated PG. That just piqued my interest further. What does a Rob Zombie family movie look like? When the trailer was released, any anticipation the internet had towards the film curdled. The trailer was, let's say, not good. Amid the mostly negative reviews that followed, there were a few positive notices. Now, after mainlining the first season of the show, I knew I had to judge for myself.

Zombie's film acts as a prequel to TV show, depicting how Herman and Lily met in Transylvania and came to live on 1313 Mockingbird Lane. Dr. Wolfgang builds new life from parts of the recently dead. His idiot assistant grabs the brain of a hacky stand-up comic, instead of the brain of his brilliant scientist brother. The resulting flesh-golem names himself Herman Munster and, when revealed on Transylvanian TV, is a goofball. This catches the eye of romance-hungry Lily Gruesella, the vampire daughter of the Count. Her dad doesn't approve of Lily and Herman's relationship but soon they are married. Trouble arises when Lily's werewolf brother, Lester, talks Herman into selling the family castle to some shady investors. 

Any fears that Rob Zombie would grunge up “the Munsters” are dispelled within minutes of the film beginning. The new film is painstakingly faithful to the TV show. Obscure “Munsters” supporting characters – Lester, Uncle Gilbert, Zombo, the Tin Can Man – all have small roles. Grandpa's bat, Igor, gets a whole character arc. Spot the dragon gets a grand introduction. Zombie makes sure to include at least two sequences devoted to the show's main reoccurring gag: People fleeing in terror from the Munsters in mundane situations. “The Munsters” derives much of its humor from goofy interactions between its goofy characters and extremely silly monster movie puns. There's a whole sequence where Count Orlok from “Nosferatu” shows off Polaroids of his pet rats. As well as multiple dance sequences. Zombie is so faithful, that he even replicates the sleepy pacing of a sixties sitcom. His “Munsters” often feels like a series of loose gags barely strung along, moving towards a low-key climax and abrupt ending.

The rock star turned filmmaker wanted to be even more faithful to the show in another regard: He originally hoped to make his “Musnters” in black-and-white. When the studio nixed the idea, he decided to go in the opposite direction. The film has an exaggerated color palette, that's extra bright. The sets – which are actually quite nice – are often lit in neon. (Zombie still includes lengthy black-and-white scenes, like a TV broadcast, the classic Universal intro, and a recreation of the season two opening.) To match the searing color choice, Zombie includes other cartoonish visual touches. Reaction shots are often pair with silly background animations. Wipe pans using bat, coffin, or lightning bolt shapes reoccur often. There's a full-on animated montage. The camera movements are sometimes frenzied, including repeated crash-zooms, dutch angles, and quick cuts. Much like the old show, Zombie's film is a live-action cartoon and absolutely looks like one too. 

Clearly, Zombie wouldn't have worked so hard to replicate the look and feel of “The Munsters” if the characters weren't important to him. He casts the well known characters with regular players of his. Daniel Roebuck does a spot-on impression of Al Lewis as the future Grandpa Munster, even if the script doesn't quite give him the level of zingers I'd hope for. Sheri Moon camps it up extensively as Lily, matching Yvonne De Carlo's sweetness, if not the ease she brought to the role. There's a funny bit part from Richard Brake, Jorge Garcia, and Cassandra Petersen. (Who hopefully becomes part of Zombie's troupe after this.) The only cast member that really gives me pause is Jeff Daniel Phillips as Herman. He does a decent riff on Fred Gwynne's guffaw but his decision to play Herman as a nasally hack stand-up doesn't quite sit with me. Gwynne carried himself with a bit more dignity than that, even if the character was always a clown.

Zombie's film is way too long, pushing up against the two hour mark. There's not much of an overarching story connecting the scenarios, further creating the feeling that you're watching four episodes of a TV show or something. Yet I honestly have to admire the dedication the shock-rocker brought to this project. He didn't just make a song called “Dragula” because he thought it was cool. He really is a “Munsters” super fan. (The famous dragster isn't in the movie, by the way. I imagine Rob probably hoped to save that, alongside Eddie and Marilyn, for a potential sequel.) The result will probably only appeal to other fans of the show. This is a love letter, practically a fan-film, and not a reinvention. And, honestly, I'm okay with that. The chuckles, if not belly laughs, come often enough. Overall, I would describe the movie as really cute... Which is not an adjective I'd ever expect to apply to a Rob Zombie movie. [6/10]

Dark Angel: The Ascent (1994)

Earlier this year, I did a retrospective for Oingo Boingo sideman turned modern exploitation filmmaker Matthew Bright. Before making his directional debut with outrageous masterpiece “Freeway,” he would write some low budget horror flicks for Full Moon Entertainment. This was back when Charles Band was still receiving backing from Paramount, giving his direct-to-video movies about killer puppets and fugly vampires some degree of production values. Bright presumably got involved with Band because other Mystic Knight Richard Band directed two projects for the studio. Of Bright's horror credits, 1994's “Dark Angel: The Ascent” has received some positive notices. In particular, it was the favorite movie of a girl I had a wild crush on back in high school. It's about time I catch up with this mash-up of demonic horror and action movie morality.

Deep in the pits of Hell, Veronica lives with her family of demons. Her dad, after torturing damned souls all day, turns his wrath on the rebellious teenager. Her older sister shows her a path that leads out of the inferno. Veronica arrives in the big city with her pet hell hound, soon developing a relationship with a young doctor named Max. She finds the human world full of sinners and evildoers. By night, she uses her demonic abilities to gorily dispatch any criminal or scumbags she comes across. 

In the nineties, Gen X audiences were so cynical and distrustful of authority that they craved stories of antiheroes. This desire would eventually result in literally demonic superheroes – the likes of Spawn, Constantine, Hellboy, and Jesse Custer – becoming popular. “Dark Angel: The Ascent” fits right in with this crowd. Veronica sees the world in black and white. Either your soul is pure or you are a sinner, worthy of damnation. She rips those who harm the innocent apart with her bare hands, pulling out spines and hearts. She even has superpowers, sprouting claws (like Darkchylde or Faust) and giving the guilty visions of Hell. (Like Ghost Rider.) Eventually, she dons a tight leather dress, which certainly could've passed for a superhero uniform in the grimdark nineties. Earthly class boundaries mean nothing to her, so she targets dirty cops and corrupt politicians as much as she does petty crooks. Which gives an otherwise deeply juvenile story an anti-authoritarian edge that I appreciate. 

Unlike most horror movies, where the forces of Heaven and Hell are in opposition to each other, “Dark Angel” depicts demons and angels working together. It's devils' work to punish sinners, making them part of the same moral scale as the divine. (Though crosses still bursts into flames when Veronica holds them.) At one point, an angel – shown floating inside a bubble, like Glinda the Good Witch – talks directly with Veronica's parents. In fact, the details of Hell are amusingly mundane. Veronica's dad is an abusive asshole. His mom is a doddering biddy, who makes soups from the flesh of the damned. Not unlike Bright's “Freeway,” this is a story of a young girl escaping a shitty home life to go out into a crazy world and find herself. In this case, that means falling in love with a human doctor and, in a last minute revelation that couldn't be sloppier, learning that forgiveness is possible for anyone. 

As far as production values go, “Dark Angel” is definitely mid-tier Full Moon. I suspect most of the film's budget went to the opening sequence that introduces Hell, which shows damned souls with cages on their heads, being tormented by hosts of demons. It's pretty cool but “Dark Angel” never gets quite that infernal again. Most of the movie is set in the city or Max's apartment. Veronica's superpowers are pretty lo-fi, limited to some long fingernails and glowing eyes. The gore effects are grisly but isolated to a few scenes. Director Linda Hassani – credited as just “L. Hassani,” presumably to disguise that a woman made this skin-filled flick – previously directed segments in the arty sex movies “Inside Out,” explaining the atmospheric lighting. (The sole sex scene here is surprisingly tame.) I'm not sure if Angela Featherstone's performance as Veronica is awkwardly stilted and flat or fitting, considering she's literally a demon from Hell who doesn't understand Earthly emotions. Most of the acting is pretty goofy, especially from Daniel Markel as Max or the pair playing Veronica's demonic parents.

Ultimately, you get the impression that “Dark Angel: The Ascent” was a more ambitious screenplay that had to be scaled way back to fit within Full Moon's meager budget. There's always the feeling that more could be done here. More vistas of Hell, more scenes of Veronica paying evil onto evil, more elaborate gore and fight scenes. Instead, the movie always seems to step back when it's about to really go nuts. The last act is disappointingly rushed, Veronica just deciding to walk into the Mayor's mansion. The love story isn't very convincing either, the 81 minute run time leaving little room to develop things. I'm surprised Full Moon didn't make a sequel to “Dark Angel,” considering there's obviously more angles to explore here. Instead, it remains an interesting stand-alone from the studio, full of potential but hampered by a rushed script and limited scope. And if I had know my high school crush's taste was this schlocky, I would've worked harder to get her attention... [6/10]

Monsters: The Match Game

The quasi-sequel series to "Tales from the Darkside" didn't bring in Richard Dawson and Charles Nelson Reilly for this season one episode. Instead, "The Match Game" revolves around Jodie, who invites the boyishly handsome but mysterious Paul to a party with her friends Beverly and Matthew. They gather inside the abandoned Weaverly Mansion and play the Match Game: They sit in a circle and tell a scary story, each player contributing to the tale as long as the match they just lit burns. The foursome soon begins to spin a yarn about Herbert Weaverly, the owner of the house who committed suicide by leaping into the lake outback. They tell the tale of Harold murdering a romantic rival, horribly deforming his face in an accident, becoming a bitter old man and rising again as a soul-sucking zombie. It's not just a story though. It's coming true as they speak, a gruesome ghoul pulling itself from the water and breaking into the house, killing all he encounters. 

"The Match Game" has a great set-up and actually uses it to its full potential. The episode packs in the horror trappings, from the spooky old mansion setting to the raging storm outside. The camera mostly focuses on the actors' faces as it goes around the circle, each one contributing to the tale, lit only by the match in their fingers. I love the subtly of the moment when the story starts to take over, the camera remaining on Paul's face as the match strangely burns longer than usual. By keeping the monster off-screen for long as possible, and forcing us to focus on the sound of the actors' voices, quite a lot of suspense is built. 

Once the rotting corpse burst through the door, the tension doesn't let up either. Herbert is a green, slimy zombie, with a fucked-up face, right out of an E.C. Comic cover. (Dick Smith gets a prominent "Special Effect Make-Up Consultant" credit, so no wonder it looks good.) He's played by Tom Woodruff Jr., doing his best Tarman impression. "The Match Game" also does something that always impresses me about monster stories: It introduces a set of rules governing the creature and carefully follows them. The ability of Herbert to suck out people's souls with his hateful glare results in a surprisingly gory death scene. It also sets up a clever way to drive the ghoul off. 

The only mistake "The Match Game" makes is a climax that explains things a little too much. I loved the implication early on that this story is literally taking on a life of its own, with opens up a lot of interesting avenues about fiction and the power it holds over us. Instead, we get a more tidy, psychic explanation. Even with that being the case, "The Match Game" is a tense, creative, well executed half-hour. I figured this was a highly regarded "Monsters" episode simple because it has the marquee value of Ashley Lawrence and Tori Spellings, as Jodie and Beverly, but it's actually really good. [8/10]

Prelude (1927)

Rock nerds debate what the first music video was but, depending on your definition of the term, the format may actually predate synchronized sound in film. “Prelude” is a 1927 short film written, directed, and starring the fantastically named Castleton Knight. Though silent in its natural form, it is meant to play alongside Rachmaninoff's classical composition “Prelude in C Sharp Minor.” The story for this prototype music video, like so many early American horror films, draws its inspiration from Poe. A man dozes off while reading “The Premature Burial” and then has a horrifying nightmare about being buried alive. While he soon wakes up, the unsettling feeling persists.

While it sounds ridiculous to call a silent movie the first music video, “Prelude” really does sync up perfectly with Rachmoninoff's music. Many of the images in the film are directly in tune with the pounding notes of the music. Such as a grim reaper like statue on the man's mantle place seemingly dancing to the melody, in what's some pretty accomplished camera work for 1927. Or the tolling of a bell, that awakens the man from his dream, matching up with the concluding section of the song. The dreary, foreboding tones of Rachmoninoff's music certainly matches the images here, of a horse-drawn hearse moving towards a cemetery, dirt tossed into the grave, and a grieving widow throwing a flower onto the casket. 

And as a horror movie, Knight gifts “Prelude” with some fittingly spooky sights. I like how reading the story makes the man look at the everyday items in his room, such as a skull shaped ash tray, with a newfound dread. The nightmare itself is extremely well done. It features Knight shrieking in horror inside the translucent coffin. Within his eyes, we see a surprisingly graphic depiction of the fires of Hell. “Prelude” even has a classic “Or is it?” horror movie ending. Though the ghastly visions were just a dream, the death-like statue is reflected within the man's drinking glass in the final shot, suggesting how the lingering inevitability of our own mortality floats over us at all times. In other words, “Prelude” is cool shit. [8/10]